Not a Fairy Tale
by extra-Mt
Summary: Aileen only saw Sally once a year, but even that was too much for the brunette. What happened after the Devil's Night at Hotel Cortez that the camera didn't capture. Angsty Saileen.


So, I shamelessly wrote Saileen prematurely because the lack of their appearances is simply upsetting. I know there's more to discover about Sally, so what I write here is just my guesses. (Praise me if they turned out to be true)

 **Rated** : M for violence and a mention of rape/child abuse. Read at your own risk.

 **A/N** : It's …sexy…? For Christ's sake, I don't know what y'all mean by sexy. IT'S ANGST THAT'S WHAT IT IS. enjoy :)

* * *

Aileen was feeling euphoric. A good deal of Champaign coursed through her veins and was making her dizzy, but it wasn't the only reason. The Devil's Night was always such an amusement. Performing the act of hurting others released adrenaline in her brain. She hadn't felt that for a long time. It was a shame she could only experience the rash of excitement once a year.

After finishing their _dessert_ , the host of the party had called it a night, allowing his guests to enjoy the rest of the night individually. Dahmer was probably fucking (with) the half-dead boy he had lobotomized at the table. Ramirez said he would go outside and burgle some homes. She didn't care what Gacy was up to, or Zodiac killer for that matter…who knew what the enigmatic guy was doing anyway?

Unlike her co-guests, Aileen was content just chilling on the nice hotel bed. A pack of cigarettes and a bottle of beer in her hands, the night didn't have to have any drama.

The red carpet of the hallways resembled the blood on her shirt and face. One foot in front of the other…she shouldn't have drunken so much. But somehow she craved more, something more to make her head spin like a merry-go-round, without the cheery music of course.

Flipping her messy hair, she rounded the corner. And the dilated pupils got even bigger at the sight of the drug addict standing at her door.

The blonde woman was the definition of elusiveness; after bringing the man in for dessert, she had wandered off like cigarette smoke. The lacy black dress hugged her petite figure, and she would've looked like a black swan if it wasn't for the shoddy leopard jacket and the cheaply crimped hair. Sally gave her a smile that went almost unnoticed.

 _Here we go again_ , Aileen thought. There was always some kind of a weird tension between them. Whenever both of them were in the same room, the air felt like it was full of gasoline, ready to catch fire. If Sally was a leopardess, the cop killer was a lioness. Both felines, and they were highly proud creatures.

"Can I come in?" the junkie inquired as Aileen unlocked the door.

"Do as you wish."

The room was just like every other room; dim, gloomy, depressing, you name it. And of course, being a ghost she was, Aileen didn't have anything with her. No suitcase, no change of clothes, no nothing. The first time she'd visited the place was so much different, though. Her entire life, wrecked houses and shitty motels were all she knew; Hotel Cortez in California had made her feel so thrilled and so out of place at the same time.

Although her black eyes didn't bother to acknowledge the presence of the other, the musky perfume from behind made Aileen hyperconscious. She didn't want to admit, but the blonde always made her feel small. It was like her psychopathic skills to manipulate others didn't work for the blonde. Sally knew how breakable she was, and Aileen was scared of the teary eyes that seemed to mirror her own.

Dragging a cigarette deeper than usual, the taller woman placed the beer rather gently on the night stand. She could feel the addict's gaze on her bare arms. Every time she felt the gaze on her body, it ignited something in her stomach. It felt like the junkie was estimating which part of the body would be the best to sink her teeth in.

Aileen felt the other move again, walking with glee of a turkey before Thanksgiving, and stopping right behind her. The gaze was burning the back of her neck. It was hard not to shiver at the intensity that could bore a hole on the skin. Her entire body shut down, and her brain wasn't communicating with her limbs correctly. Breathing shallowly was all she could do at best.

And there was a hand, tracing her spine slowly up and down. It was as if Sally was making sure she was truly there, making sure her shadow was there. The brunette trembled again, visibly this time. She was used to people treating her like shit, like she was another piece of garbage. But Sally, she touched her like she was the most delicate piece of art; another reason why Aileen was so scared of her.

"Stop," her voice came out low. Her own heart confused her, and she felt so betrayed by herself, more than when nobody had believed her innocence at the trial. "Stop doin' that."

"I'm not doing anything," the crimped blonde chuckled. Her fingers settled on the lower back, not quite reaching where the brown belt hugged Aileen's pelvis.

And finally, the taller woman turned around. Their eyes fought a silent fight, causing another wave of shiver down Aileen's spine. The shorter woman smiled again, her hands now rested flat against her stomach.

There was that look again. Sally's cat-like eyes glimmered in the dim room.

Ever since that wicked cow of a woman named Iris defenestrated her, Sally had been waiting for something to make her feel alive, as ironic as it sounds considered her state. She had been waiting too long in the woeful hallways. When March had suggested she take a part in the Devil's Night, not as a guest but as an assistant, the blonde'd thought it would change her life. But years of helping the deceased serial killers didn't do her happiness a service. It might have accelerated her heart rate (if she ever had a heart) to be in the same vicinity of those great evils, but so did heights. She was afraid of heights, and killing wasn't her thing.

So it'd come as a shock to meet the new member of the Devil's Night in 2002. The drug addict had never heard of the name "Aileen Wuornos", but the dark gleam of her eyes told her that the brunette was just as evil as the rest of the killers.

They didn't talk that night, or the next year, or the year after that. It was only about 5 years ago that they'd started to acknowledge each other. It was just some brief exchanges of looks and words, never lasting for more than 10 seconds each time. But there must've been something that triggered Aileen's interests, because the way she looked Sally had changed since then. There was a pain, a sense of longing, fear, and desire on her crude face. They never talked about it, and Sally supposed it was for the best.

In fact, there was nothing to talk about. It was touch that Sally longed for, not words. She wanted, needed to feel the brunette, to see what was hidden underneath the ugly mask. The unsophisticated manners of the cop killer gave everyone an impression that she was truly the monster the society saw. But it was the society that had created the monster of her. When she looked into the dark holes of Aileen's eyes, all she saw was an innocent girl, searching for soft smiles and warm hugs. Honestly, it surprised Sally that nobody else could see how fragile this woman was.

The blonde hummed quietly, while her hand ascended from the stomach to Aileen's face, cupping her cheek and tenderly caressing the rough skin. The skin under her fingertips was as cold as her own fingers. Being dead for so long, she had forgotten how warmth even felt. She drew small circles with her thumb, hoping it would somehow make warmth surface.

"I said stop it," the brunette repeated herself, which was such a fruitless act. They both knew, deep down, that there was nothing to be stopped. As dysfunctional as their flow seemed to be, neither could exist without the other. Just air needed plants to purify it, and plants needed air in order to thrive.

"Don't you try to act so shy. You know I'm not like other people," Sally purred. Her lips turned upward slightly as she stepped even closer, breathing the same air as the taller woman. A hitched breath came out, and it made the blonde chuckle, accompanied by some tears. The adoration she had for the brunette was so overwhelming it even scared her. "Are you scared of me, baby?"

Aileen snapped at the endearing pet name. She slapped the hand that was caressing her cheek before shoving the woman against the wall. The force ran through the walls and knocked the beer bottle and the lamp off the night stand, causing dull thuds on the carpeted floor. It wasn't even the sappy endearment that infuriated her; it was her own heart that jumped at the affection she'd never received. And now her breath came irregular as her hands pressed Sally by the bare shoulders, eyes flaming against the droopy ones of the addict.

It was only a fragment of a moment before the shorter woman let out a giggle that sounded so void of joy, as if no hand was bruising her shoulders.

"You…" The blonde's voice cracked. More tears soaked her cheeks, while her manicured garnet fingers traced Aileen's jaw. "You are like a china cup. So beautiful…and so fragile."

The brunette didn't know someone could enrage her so much until now. It didn't compare those sons of bitches who called themselves cops. Her white knuckle flew and punched the wall, boring a hole right beside the junkie's head. Her arm was buried in the cigarette-stained wall wrist-deep, but her eyes kept glaring at the woman.

Sally didn't flinch, nor did she screech. She only batted her thick mascaraed eyelashes, softly staring at the other with amusement.

"Who's scared now, huh?" the killer spat out.

But it was answered with a slight shake of a head, like a leopardess patronizing a lion cub. However loud she roared, a baby lioness could only do so much. It could never scare a fully grown carnivore, let alone make a bird flinch.

"You think I'd be frightened that easily?" Sally breathed out, with her bottom eyelashes glistening with tears like a leaf catching rain. She bit her lip the way a mischievous child would do, but her voice betrayed her. "Did you think no one had ever raised a hand on me?"

And with that, the taller woman finally saw the bottom of the dark pits that were Sally's eyes; there was a little girl, imprisoned in the hopelessness, having waited for too long for someone to help her climb out of there.

The addict chuckled again, her crimped hair dancing around her milky shoulders, neck muscles moving under her black choker. The shocked expression of the other woman was nothing but endearing. There was no need for words to understand each other, to see how their painful past had made their souls so hollow. A shadow didn't need a word to recognize its other half.

She gently gripped the rim of the brunette's jacket, and pulled her closer until her dark lips could plant soft kisses on her neck.

"You can't hurt me if you tried."

The disheveled brunette hair brushed her nose, and Sally could smell the blood. Come to think of it, there was also some blood on Aileen's face. The crimped blonde wondered, while ascending to her ear, how she hadn't noticed it before. Darting her tongue out, she softly and slowly massaged the brunette's earlobe, sending shivers down her spine.

It had occurred to her this might instigate more rage from the taller woman, but the way the rough fingers clenched her dress-clad waist implied otherwise. Aileen held her like her life depended on it (how ironic was that?), and Sally felt so safe in her arms. The hold was so tight it would probably leave bruises for days, she mused. But a bruise didn't mean a thing to her; she had the woman before her.

It'd been too long, too much time for her to scheme how to get Aileen's attention. But the joke was on her, because now that the brunette was pressing her body against her, she couldn't come up with her next move.

After giving a soft nip at the skin below the ear, the crimped blonde sluggishly pulled her body away. She wanted to see her face. She needed to see with her eyes that her ghost was truly there, not just to feel her. And there she was, in her dirty clothes that looked like old rags, jeans too bulky for her size, and a blood-covered cross dangling from her neck.

Sally's eyes couldn't contain amusement at the sight. The dark redness of the blood was rather hard to distinguish from the lipstick the junkie had smeared on her neck. As horrendous as it might seem to others, the blonde thought Aileen looked like a child who had played outside too much and had dirt all over herself.

While her hand tucked a strand of auburn hair behind Aileen's ear, the other hand rose to her own mouth, moistening the thumb and rubbing out the half dry blood with it. She repeated the action again, and the taller woman let her.

The room was as silent as it could be, with both of them standing with no word to express their tangled up emotions. But if anyone could listen to a heart, theirs would be too noisy and loud to bear.

Little by little, Sally wiped the blood off, her eyes welling up again by the second. Up until now, Aileen had always wondered what it was that caused the blonde to be so weak, to weep like this, but what she hadn't realized was how strong the woman was; even with her eyes full of tears, her hands never shook, her head still high (as crazy as it was). Maybe that was how Sally had always survived, like the taller woman had stood tall until the day of her execution.

When her face was free of blood, the crimped blonde traced the strong jaw with her fingers, cupping the cheek as she rested her forehead against Aileen's. It felt so familiar and so right. _If I were to die for the second time, I would want to take this feeling with me wherever I'd go,_ Sally thought.

The lights flickered.

As hot tears roll down her cheek, she felt Aileen tilt her head to kiss her palm. Her chipped lips were scratching the surface of Sally's delicate skin, but there was nothing she wanted more in this world.

 _If it was possible to feel those lips on mine…_

The ceiling light and the lamp on the floor flickered, and flickered.

… _if she could tell me she loves me._

The lights made buzzing sounds as they flickered, over and over again.

And there it stood in the middle of the room, right behind the object of her desire, the ghost with a metal dildo hanging expectantly. The white face got closer and closer with each flicker of the lights.

But it didn't bother Aileen; all she needed was to kiss every inch of the woman. The desire controlled her body and she leaned in, only to be stopped by the blonde's other hand placed on her neck, silently commanding to keep the distance.

With dry lips, Aileen cracked her eyes ever so slightly, and was met with the eyes of the woman. Their mouths were only inches away, and yet so far from each other.

"I love y–"

"Don't. Don't say it," the crimped blonde choked out, her hand covering Aileen's dry lips as if to keep the feelings in. "I don't want to hear you say it."

God was a cruel devil, always gave her what she wanted at the worst time.

It had started like any other day a child could imagine. She had come home after playing with her neighbor friends. Her mother yelled at her after seeing her dirty dress, lecturing her about how difficult it'd be to scrub out the dirt. With her knotted eyebrows, she almost ripped the piece of clothing off right in the kitchen. The little Sally let out a yelp, but went to her room to change as she'd been told. She didn't realize at the moment, but a pair of filthy black eyes had been staring at her bare torso.

The night had gone by quickly, and her mother told her to go to bed after finishing the dinner. A good deal of fatigue overtook her body that night, and Sally fell asleep in no time.

There was no telling the time, but something had woken her. The room was illuminated by the moonlight from outside, but that wasn't the only source of light. In her still drowsy state, the girl lifted her head from the pillow and found the door of the room slightly open.

She suspected her mother'd check upon her before going to bed, as she always did. She tried to go back to sleep. And then there was another person in the room, she felt. Her eyes grew as big as the moon outside as the body sank into the mattress, making the coils creak under the weight. It wasn't a cold night, and yet Sally couldn't help trembling.

Something was terribly wrong, her innocent mind screamed. As the face of the unknown got closer to her face, the smell of alcohol got stronger. The white hand slowly and cautiously grasped the sheets. The movement reminded her of a snake, slithering on her body (although she'd never had such an experience). Up until this point, Sally'd tried pretending to be asleep, but when the hand came back to her face and covered her mouth roughly, she realized it was a mistake.

The faceless monster told her to keep quiet, because if she ever made a sound, he would kill her and her mother. So the girl tried her hardest to silence herself, no matter how scared she felt. The ceiling of her room grew blurrier as her eyes welled up. She didn't know what was happening. What was certain was that the monster would end up killing her.

But it didn't. It slid her pajama pants off and touched her legs with its coarse fingers, all the while breathing in Sally's face. She felt like her tiny body was being compressed under the weight of the monster. The smelly breath made her feel nausea, made her head spin with confusion and fear. And it ended as suddenly as it had started. The monster exhaled heavily before lifting its body off her, leaving the frightened child alone in her bed.

Since then, the monster visited her a couple of times a week at night, always smelling alcohol. "Say 'I love you, daddy,'" it would always say. It didn't stop until she finally decided to leave the home when she turned 16.

The life had been harsh on her even then; the voice always followed her whenever she'd go, causing a constant splitting headache. The desire to run away from her past and the headache eventually led her to drugs. She didn't discriminate; acid, mushroom, marijuana… But hard drugs like heroin and cocaine, which were beginning to gain popularity at that time, got most of her attention. Being a young woman on her own devices, Sally didn't bother to pay attention to the possibility of addiction. One day she realized she couldn't function without them. Just like that, and there was no turning back to her home.

Even after coming to term with her addiction, the monster didn't go away. The amount of drugs she needed to function properly increased gradually, until the Iris incident happened.

God gave her what she always wanted, a release from pain, but the curse of the hotel kept her from it. In fact, the source of her misery started to have a body after her death. An actual form that other people could see and touch. Of course, it wasn't the real description of the body of her father; the faceless monster with a metal dildo was what her little innocent mind had created. Whether or not it was part of the curse, it was a nightmare for her nonetheless.

Luckily for the blonde, it seemed to desire a great harm on others instead of hurting her, those who got too close to her emotionally, because intimacy meant pain, and all the men who had gotten caught by the metal drill deserved it. They deserved it unlike the little girl who was too scared and too innocent to even call for help. Sally didn't have a problem with the monster hurting others whatsoever…until now.

Had she met the brunette and known the best of life much earlier, when she was still of this earth, the monster would've never existed in the hotel. But the irony was; they couldn't have met if she'd been alive. If that was what God had planned for her, surely he was the cruelest devil, even crueler than her father.

She couldn't hurt Aileen, not her, the person who deserved all adoration.

"Don't ever tell me that."

 _######_

The night grew old with the two of them not exchanging many words. Words were for the mortal anyway, those who had only so much time to be understood.

Sally knew the other woman had seen the pain of her life even though she didn't speak a word of it. The silence had never been so comforting to either of them. Being with someone who shared a soul together felt like lukewarm water running through their veins, cleansing their pain and suffering away. In that moment, in the dark room of the godforsaken hotel, there was no reason to be scared of the future or the past.

The sky outside the window was getting brighter, and they knew what it meant for them. The Devil's Night only lasted as long as the moon was high in the sky; at dawn, the ghost of the killer would have to walk away.

They lay on the blood-stained mattress together, though the sun and the moon could align more closely than they did. Aileen kept their distance, and let the blonde woman stare into space. From time to time she would glance at her and see some tears roll down her temples.

"Do you know what I do?" the addict whispered after dragging a cigarette. "When I want to see your face, I borrow someone's phone and search for you on internet. Your face is everywhere."

"Fuck off."

A quiet chuckle escaped the lips that resembled dark red rose petals.

"I missed you," the blonde spoke again, sincerity woven into the cigarette smoke. "I will miss you. You are my other half, my mirror that can never be. You are like my shadow, always reminding me of my own existence, but always leaving me on the darkest nights."

Aileen kept her dark eyes on her for several moments, in awe of the enigmatic woman. "You'd make a great poet," she whispered.

The response came with quiet giggles. It resonated in Aileen's ears so pleasantly that if she'd had her eyes closed, it would've been impossible to tell the hint of sorrow. "You are not the first person to say that."

"Who then?"

The blonde turned her head to Aileen and gave her what looked like a smile. "You don't want to know."

Silence fell between them yet again. Somewhere outside the room there was a scream, or laughter of a maniac killer ghost. As cony as it sounded, it felt like time flew differently in there. It felt like the room existed in a different universe than the rest of the world.

"I'm not gay," Aileen abruptly spoke, though whether the words were directed to the other or herself remained unknown.

The crimped blonde breathed out a soft chuckle. "Me neither."

This made Aileen smile a bit.

The alarm clock hit 5:30, and the early birds were chirping in the faintly bright sky. It was such a strange thing that most people, most of the mortal, were still sound asleep at this time of the day. Sleep was something they the ghosts didn't need, or rather a luxury that they couldn't have. The brunette ghost had never despised her inability to sleep, but spending time with the blonde junkie made her have a second thought.

"There is a Japanese fairy tale about two people in the sky, who can only see each other once a year," Sally dragged a cigarette, her dark eyes shimmering ardently while staring into space.

"Something happened to them a long time ago, and they were cursed, ripped apart from each other. The prince lives on one side of the sky, and the princess lives on the other. They are forbidden to see each other except for one particular night in summer. They get to see each other when the Milky Way bridges their worlds. And they spend the night together, until they have to separate again in the morning, promising to see each other again exactly a year later."

The brunette attentively listened to the blonde, who shed tears so effortlessly. The cigarette between her coarse fingers was long forgotten, its ashes falling on the mattress and her clothes without her realizing it.

"Why're you tellin' me that story?" the brunette asked. "Do I look like a fairy tale type of gal to you?"

Sally snickered at her, slightly shaking her head as if to chide the killer. Her white teeth glimmered between the dark-colored lips, and Aileen wondered for a thousandth time how someone could look so utterly entertained and despaired simultaneously.

"Don't you think they mirror us? Two people, only able to see each other once a year." The voice of the addict cracked ever so slightly, but she didn't seem to notice.

In fact, Sally never seemed to be aware of it when tears wet her cheeks, or when her lips quivered. She was a woman of ego, a walking definition of selfishness. And yet she was like a broken music box at the same time. A fragile work of art that had once brought joy to the world.

The brunette had to rip her eyes off the woman. Otherwise, the broken shards of the blonde would have snuck underneath her skin and she would've exploded from within.

"We aren't anything like that," the taller woman whispered back as she tossed the cigarette butt in the ashtray. She didn't have enough faith in herself not to show any vulnerability to the other. So she tried to keep her voice low.

"Why? Because we aren't royal?" Sally turned her head to look at her. "Because we aren't a boy and a girl?"

"Because we aren't romantic like that."

The low voice of Aileen bounced on the washed-out ceiling, only to be absorbed in the dark hole of the hotel. But the shorter woman had heard it, and it pained somewhere in Aileen's chest, somewhere her heart used to be.

And then Sally smiled, softly and almost sincerely, as if she was truly happy. The eyes of the blonde reminded Aileen of two black butterflies on a snow-covered hill, although she'd never seen or imagined such a view until that moment. So fragile and yet so destructively breathtaking. And perhaps, she was able to understand why Sally had called her fragile, too.

Rolling closer to the delicate creature, the taller woman absentmindedly removed the cigarette from Sally's mouth. A slight surprise betrayed the blonde's face, and an inaudible gasp escaped the lips.

They lay there for some moments like the world around them didn't exist. And both of them hoped how that was true. If the world disappeared at the moment, at least their despair would dissolve into nothingness too. Then they wouldn't have to tolerate the mad silence that deafened their ears.

The brunette's head was blank as she shifted her eyes to the dark lips. She wondered what the woman would taste like. Would it be nicotine and alcohol? Most likely. But she would never know.

Instead of kissing her, she brought the cigarette to her mouth. The taste of nicotine was all there was in her mouth, but at least her lips were wrapped around the orange cigarette butt with the dark lipstick on.

Their eyes never left each other's, Sally watching her with mournful glee, and Aileen trying to take in everything the woman was. Inhale she did, as deep as her dead lungs allowed, as much as she needed to feel the blonde. It wasn't the same brand she would smoke, but it only convinced her even more that this was how the other would taste.

And that was all. That was the end.

With her lungs full of the toxic chemicals, Aileen put the cigarette back to Sally's mouth before leaving the room. There was nothing to morn for. They weren't friends, or lovers. It was a pity she wouldn't be able to come and admire the hotel until the next Devil's Night. It would be another dull year for the cop killer.

But there was nothing else to miss about this place, or that's what Aileen told herself as the door made a click sound behind her.


End file.
